Türk Kahvesi

You know what they say...you can take the barista out of the coffee shop, but you can't actually take the coffee out of the barista (for both health-related and legal reasons).

Due to my love for (some might call it an addiction to) coffee, I learned how to make it a la Turka. Here's what you'll need.

The metal pot is called a cezve. There are different sizes to make different amounts, and there are older and newer shapes and styles. Essentially it is a small stove-top pot with a handle and a spout. You also need incredibly finely ground coffee (I got mine fresh from Tuğba, the local kuruyemiş, or dried foods store), water, and sugar. Turkish fincanlar (coffee cups) and a spoon are part of the necessary equipment. The two pictured were a gift from a coworker's mother, who, upon learning that I was only two fincan away from learning this important skill, immediately went to a cupboard and chose those two to gift me. They are thus even more beautiful than they look.

First, measure the amount of water by filling your fincan with cold water and pouring it into the cezve. This means you will get exactly the right amount of coffee when you finish. It's important to use cold water because the longer it takes to boil, the better the coffee will taste. Then, use about one and a half heaping teaspoonfuls of coffee per fincan and just heap the grounds on top of the water (don't stir). Next sugar- there are four ways to order coffee in a cafe- az şekerli (a little sugar), çok şekerli (a lot of sugar), orta (middle), or sade (plain). These definitions of course functionally mean nothing, as every cafe you go to gives you a slightly different interpretation, so I used 3 sugar cubes for two fincan and called it "orta".

Next, the fun part. Put the cezve on a burner with the heat turned up moderately high but not so high as you burn yourself reaching for the handle. Wait until the coffee boils and foams up, taking the cezve off the heat just when the foam is about to overflow. Skim the foam off the top with your spoon and put equal amounts into each fincan. Put the cezve back on the flame until it foams again, take it off the heat and turn off the stove. Carefully pour the remaining coffee slowly into each fincan, trying not to disturb the foam so it rises to the top. And that's all!

The Ottoman way to enjoy this, I was told, is to have water with it, drinking a little first to cleanse and prepare your palette, and a little afterward, probably to clean the bit of grounds out of your teeth from your last sip.

ADDENDUM: Another method dictates that you put the sugar in first, stirring it into the water as it begins to heat up until the sugar dissolves, and then adding the coffee and not stirring anymore so the foam forms. I find this method produces slightly better foam, but if you're lazy or forget, the above-described no-stir method works perfectly fine.

Tiptoeing in the Travertines

This weekend my ev arkadaş and I went to a coworker's family's house in a nearby town, Denizli. It is famous for its textiles and perhaps moreso, for Pamukkale. Pamukkale ("cotton castle/fortress") is a geological formation with natural hot springs and travertines, or terraces of carbonate minerals left by the flowing water. Our English pamphlet (yours for the "low" entry price of 20TL) gave us, helpfully, the chemical formula for the reaction that forms the carbonate travertines. ("The reaction is Ca(HCO3) + O2 --> CaCO+CO2+CO+H20, chemically".) In any case, Pamukkale is also the cite of a sizable ruined Roman city, and the ruins are well-reconstructed and mostly in situ.

There are many tombs like the below surrounding the ruined city, which I believe I read somewhere is due to the supposed healing properties of the mineral hot springs being a last-ditch effort for the near-dead, and thus when they were not cured by the waters they died and were buried outside. So it goes.

These are travertines that you are NOT allowed to walk in. The water is actually pumped in- the hot springs do not produce water continuously, but the travertines look most beautiful with water in them. Solution? Pipes.

However there are other ones that you are allowed to wade in to your heart's content, and most people do. There is also a bath or pool area, but it costs extra.

This is a picture of two of the four pomegranate trees in my host's backyard. Her family gave me many pomegranates during the course of my three day stay and a small sack of them before I went home. I was a happy house guest.

My coworker's family was, predictably, impressed with my roommate's and my Turkish skills (for knowing no Turkish, she has improved greatly, but also it only takes a "Merhaba" to get complimented on your Turkish skills in most situations). They also predictably commented on how I look foreign but she looks Turkish (I have had one family tell me, "I can tell you are foreign from your face. Like Hilary Clinton," which I hope was likening me in foreignness to Hilary Clinton and not in facial resemblance). I bought a jezve, or Turkish coffee pot, and practiced making Türk kahvesi in their mutfak (kitchen). My coworker's mother was quite happy with me after this (even though my coffee was not the best), and would ask me to pour tea and assess my ability (or lack thereof) to carry a tray of beverages without spilling. Clearly she was grooming me to be an excellent Turkish housewife.

Just like Whitney Houston sang....

Antalya, I will always love you. Antalya is kind of like the Florida Keys of Turkey, although there were no giant murals of undersea life painted on the sides of buildings, which is an important feature of the Keys. No, instead there where images of Ataturk and Turkish flags on almost every conceivable surface, because this weekend was Republic Day. Even though the town is incredibly touristy, one gets the sense of why-- it's also incredibly beautiful. The deep and incomparable blue of the Mediterranean is the foreground against a background of imposingly beautiful mountains.

To avoid sounding like a guidebook, I will just post some pictures. They are so postcard-like that they are almost boring.

A Fulbright friend made this awesome rock tower. Rock beaches are cool because you can lay on the rocks that have been warmed by the sun (like so many reptiles), but definitely bring some kind of sandals. The tower marked the site of my first swim in the Mediterranean, and an excellent afternoon picnic.

Right before I got on Antalya's tram system to leave town...

I stayed at the White Garden Pansiyon, which was totally reasonably priced (30TL a night) and was beautiful, "a good site for a harem", in my words, "beguilingly restored" in the words of the Lonely Planet.

Oh! We also managed to find an English-language bookstore, which was really kind of the front of the house with no back wall that opened into a garden, with shelf upon shelf of books that the owner, a man who resembled Beauregard the Muppet in speech and form, had read once upon a time. He offered to make us fish with fennel and white wine (sadly, we were leaving several hours later, so we could not accept) and then told us that next time we come to Antalya we should bring him English books, because he prefers trading to selling.

This is part of the parade for Republic Day. It featured a seemingly endless stream of high school and grammar school students, often in drum and bugle lines.

There was also a crazy rock concert thing that we did not get to on time in the main square in front of (what else) the statue of Atatürk, but we had the perfect vantage point for the Republic Day fireworks.

I personally am still a little unsure about what Turks think of Republic Day. Maybe the rock and roll and lazer light show in the main square would have helped me get a better sense of things (probably!). When I returned to Uşak, though, and asked about Republic Day, most people did not even acknowledge its passing, or so it seemed.

The Fulbrighters in Antalya thanked Atatürk during the fireworks for his many contributions to Turkish life that we have benefited from, such as an alphabet we can read. There was a surprise Republic Day gift awaiting us when we returned to our respective cities, as well - the ban of youtube was repealed that weekend! Now I can once again watch old Eurovision videos to my heart's content with no need to mask my IP address - truly, a Republic Day miracle.

Anadolu mola

Look at this beast!

The internet in this bus is faster than the internet in my apartment. Seriously, I cannot describe how much I love Turkish buses. They are five-star hotels on wheels- they give you a snack (sometimes TWO snacks) and a beverage (Turks are the only people I can think of who thought 'Hey, doling out cups of boiling water inside a moving vehicle sounds like a good idea...'), and often will give you a blanket or pillow if you ask, AND the newest and nicest buses have in-bus WCs in addition to 3G internet, MP3s, TV, movies, and video games. What more could you need? Anadolu, the major company which has one of its home otogars in Uşak, is happily one of the best. They ALSO offer magazines and bad novels to read, and little disposable coverlets for your headset.

I'm on my way to Antalya now, by the way. It's Republic Day Weekend, so no afternoon class!

The Call to Prayer

I've come to like hearing the sound of the call to prayer (Turkish ezan) throughout my day here. It marks the passing of time in the day kind of like dog-eared pages of a book. I heard a rumor that the call is played or recited (sometimes it is prerecorded, sometimes sung live) at slightly different times every day in every part of Turkey so that someone is praying everywhere, at every moment of the day, every day (obviously this would be contingent on people praying in other parts of the world, but still). That's a really interesting and cool result of a unified religion, no?

In any case, out of respect, televisions and radio are muted or turned off when the call to prayer is heard. Many people keep talking or eating or whatever it was they were doing, but electronic background noises are muted. Today I caught myself turning off my music when I heard it- I didn't really do it on purpose, and I was alone in my room, but it still seemed somewhat rude to not turn my music down. I know some secular Turks bristle at this auditory symbol of the religious ideology their country is steeped in...but as a secular American with no real Muslim ties to speak of, I just find it a pleasant reminder that I am living in Turkey.

The Turkish Twist

One of the more witty and insightful Fulbrighters came up with a neat little phrase that summarizes Turkey perhaps more aptly than the "four T's". We call it "The Turkish twist", which is not a dance (I will invent that later), but rather, the strange ways that a perfectly normal experience is rendered confusing and stressful for no real reason other than the fact that we are in Turkey.

For example (mesela), two weekends ago I went to Sinop. I had a lovely time with the three other Fulbrighters there and got to see the Black Sea, eat fresh fish in a floating restaurant, and hone my tavla (backgammon) skills. However, after the first night of staying in the polisevi (police house, where the two Sinop Fulbrighters were living), the front desk staff brusquely informed us that it was NOT A HOTEL and refused to give the Sinop duo their keys on the second night. Even though between the two of them they have six beds, apparently you need "permission" from "[insert bureaucrat here]" in order to stay there. So, I ended up taking the night bus home, and the other non-Sinop visitor found a new place to stay. It didn't ruin the weekend, but it did cause a few moments of unnecessary stress. The Turkish twist.

Sinop as seen from near a cafe that is on the northernmost point in Turkey.

This is part of the Sinop harbor, where apparently cruise ships dock from time to time.


As for last weekend, I went to Eskişehir and Uşak's neighboring big-ish city, Afyonkarahisar. The Turkish twist in Eskişehir for me was that the "EsTram" there, while adorable and convenient, did not magically get me to the otogar on time, so I ended up missing my scheduled bus at 11AM, changing my ticket to the 1PM bus, taking the tram back to city center, going on a short (and awesome) gondola ride in the canal, and then immediately getting back on the tram to go to the bus station to leave. Eskişehir is the best potential site of a Fulbrighter romantic comedy, so we decided. I am slowly easing myself into bigger Turkish cities--this weekend, Antalya, perhaps next weekend, Izmir, and then maybe...Istanbul?

Look at how cute this tram is.

A beautiful mosque which I did not go in to because even though I had a scarf at hand, I did not have a female guide to prevent me from making some kind of sacrilegious mistake. Another mosque, another time.

"I just got [to Eskişehir], and I think I know why no Fulbrighter was placed here."
"Why?"
"Because it's AWESOME."

The last-second gondola ride on the canal.

I am glad for my extra 45 minutes or so in Eskişehir because it allowed me to take just enough pictures to illustrate its cuteness, which I hadn't before, spending most of my time in Kahve Dünyası (a chain here, trans. coffee world) nibbling a chocolate spoon that came with my salep (a popular drink here made from the roots of orchids). I didn't take pictures of Afyon because it was night and I mostly only ate dinner there.

But back to the Turkish twist...yesterday morning, I got to teach my first class. Of course this could not happen without some kind of scheduling malfunction! (As an aside: I actually am totally in love with the lackadaisical attitude towards class here. I realized not too long ago that the reason classes last 4 hours is that a "ten minute break" inevitably means a "25 minute break", and teachers and students come late or leave early pretty much at random, so if classes were allotted a normal amount of time, next to nothing would ever get done.)

Anyways...the twist? My class actually did not come at all, or, as I perhaps more accurately speculate, they came to class around 8:30 but left the room before I arrived at 9:40, because my Fulbright coworker and I were not shown where our classrooms were until an hour after the scheduled starting time, due to our guides needing to finish their breakfast and drink their tea first. So we taught one class together (instead of two different classes separately, but at the same time) for about two and a half hours, which was perfectly OK. I am just happy to be doing what I came here to do, and the "students" (actually mostly department heads, assistant professors, and other bigwigs) are enthusiastic and do not need too much coercion to speak. Heck, they even seemed to enjoy themselves a little bit, but I don't want to get too cocky. Eventually (inşallah!) we will know when and where we are teaching each day more than five minutes before class or at least not an hour in to the start of class.

So you're saying it's NOT about ice cream...

Recently my fellow Uşak Fulbrighter and I visited a primary school in a neighboring town. It was here that we happened upon an answer to a question that had been haunting us for days. We had been wondering...what's the deal with those chimes that play the first few bars of Für Elise at somewhat regular intervals throughout the day? Apparently, this is the sound of school bells in primary schools in Uşak. Sadly it did not herald the imminent arrival of the dondurmacı, as we had previously hoped.